Gaming retailer GameStop held its annual managers conference in Las Vegas last week, and I was lucky enough to attend some of the festivities.

While the managers spent most of their time sequestered in training workshops and seminars with vendors, I got to skip right to the fun part: a huge ballroom filled with demos of the hot games coming up this Christmas season.

While I didn’t get hands-on time with everything, I did get to see almost all of the big new releases. Two games I played:

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) — release date Nov. 7.

I tested the multiplayer version of GoW2, where humans were battling wave after wave of Locust monsters. The game will be instantly recognizable to anyone who played the first, exceptional entry. The action continues to move at a fairly slow pace, since you spend most of your time walking or creeping along walls. The first Gears of War was so fun that there’s no sense recreating the wheel. I do wish that the developers would explore the options beyond the gray and brown end of the color palette, though.

Left 4 Dead (PC and Xbox 360) — Nov. 17.

I’ve got high hopes for this first-person zombie shooter. The game is designed as a cooperative affair, where you team up with three other human players to escape through a zombie infestation. Unlike GoW2, Left 4 Dead is a fast game. The zombies move as if they’re using performance-enhancing drugs, and they often roam in ferocious packs of a dozen or more. So you can go from a moment of quiet dread to frenzied, bloody confusion in a split second. When a teammate is overwhelmed and brought down beneath a munching swarm, you can shoot or bludgeon the zombies away and then heal your comrade. Playing as a lone wolf is a good way to end up having your brain eaten.